Does IBM still manufacture any computers for which EBCDIC is the primary character code set?
These days, all the computers I know of use ASCII, Unicode, or one of the ISO standard character sets.
When I was in college back in the 1980s, some of our big computers that were made by IBM still used the EBCDIC chacter set. And even worked with punched cards. Yes, it was quite sad.
I was wondering if today, in the 21st century, IBM still sells any brand new computers that work with that archaic EBCDIC character set.
The person who wrote the above answer hasn't ever heard of IBM mainframes. IBM still manufactures and sells mainframes today, and its a $3 billion a year business for them. The primary operating system for IBM mainframes is z/OS, which does support EBCDIC. They are also capable of handling ASCII and Unicode. Also, z/OS has gained many "modern" features, including running Java, UNIX applications, Linux applications, and the ability to communicate via TCP/IP and to Web-based systems.
October 16th, 2008 at 3:50 am
IBM does not make computers at all anymore (sold manufacturing arm to Chinese, and concentrates on consulting), and it is a standard practice in Hi-Tech industries to discontinue old technology to force people to buy newer hardware.
References :
October 16th, 2008 at 3:58 am
The person who wrote the above answer hasn't ever heard of IBM mainframes. IBM still manufactures and sells mainframes today, and its a $3 billion a year business for them. The primary operating system for IBM mainframes is z/OS, which does support EBCDIC. They are also capable of handling ASCII and Unicode. Also, z/OS has gained many "modern" features, including running Java, UNIX applications, Linux applications, and the ability to communicate via TCP/IP and to Web-based systems.
References :
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/05/BUGF75VUUQ1.DTL&type=tech
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/OS